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Well, I hope that the hair of my godchild is growing, and that she has now more than her god-father. His is coming to an untimely end.
To F. S. H; who had recently become a chaplain in the Navy.
St. Leonards: January 11, 1900.
I am thinking of you in your new, difficult, and interesting life, and wondering how you like it. Or, rather, I am sure that you like it in its main features. There are in every life drawbacks and discouragements, for we live by faith and not by sight, and faith must be perfected in the midst of perplexities and contradictions. The mists are useful. It would not do to have brilliant sunshine all the time. For in that case, where would faith come in? Steering towards our port in the fog means trusting the Pilot. 'Mercifully grant that we, which know Thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of Thy glorious Godhead.' I suppose that none of us fully {120} knows what this prayer means. I think that there will be more need of faith hereafter than we usually think. Can we ever apprehend the Father or the Son without faith? The deepest truths are grasped by faith not sight. The man who has learned to exercise faith here will have fuller scope for his faith hereafter. What a shock to wake up in the next world and to find that the riddles of life still need faith for their solution! Yet I imagine that it will be so. Only faith will be able to go deeper than here. The faith perfected in the mists of life will, in the sunshine of eternity, see deeper into the meaning of events. I wish I had more faith. Not sudden flights of faith annihilating time and space and rising up to the throne of heaven. But I wish I could ground all my actions on faith, and regularly see the invisible and live as one who could see always and everywhere the Unseen. We are schooled in different ways. We cannot attain to perfection in a night. As we advance in the Christian life progress seems slower. In some sense it is so. It is easier to cast off a number of definite bad habits clearly inconsistent with the ideal just at first, than to perfect self-sacrifice, humility, and self-discipline. But we are advancing, though we know it not. If the engines are always kept working, we shall reach our goal!
To C. N. W; who had recently been ordained.
St. Leonards-on-Sea: January 12, 1900.
You must remember how much your future efficiency is dependent upon a judicious use of your {121} strength during the next two or three years. I am sure you are right in looking back upon your life and tracing in its developments a higher than human guidance. It is a helpful thing to trace now and anon God's hand in our individual life. It brings Him nearer to us, and it is an awful thought that He is actually working within us. It makes us trust Him for time to come even when the prospect is gloomy. I think that we do well to spend some time in trying to interpret details of our past life. As years go on, we should have such a firm faith founded on the rock of experience that we will not be lightly shaken. Peace should be a characteristic of our life—the joy and peace which come from a certainty that there is a Purpose in all events. The sense that God has been with us in the past is a help in interpreting the history of our nation. Even our troubles are a proof that He is disciplining us. For the service of Intercession, which my brother uses in Westminster Abbey at the time of this war, the opening sentence is 'The Lord our God be with us,' and the answer is, 'As He was with our fathers.'
The College is getting on well. You must come up and see me this year, while you still know a number of men. I have now a little evening service—compline—in my rooms at 10 o'clock; Masterman asked me to have it. He asked men to come, and they asked others. I purposely refrained from asking any one. We are sometimes a goodly number. I think it is helpful to those who come. It is, I know, to me. We have a hymn when we have sufficient musical talent!
{122}
To G. J. C.
Christ's College, Cambridge: 1900.
Gwatkin has exploded Anthony, 'who never existed.' But for all that I think Anthony is much like Adam and Eve. The originals may 'never have existed.' Yet their story belongs to all time. And there will be Anthonies and Adams and Eves to the end of time. It comforts me to feel that that which makes for evil is not my true self, but a wretched, cunning animal existence independent of me, existing before I came into being, although capable of appealing to me—a serpent.
I am half glad and half sorry to hear of your harmonium. Public worship is a terribly difficult thing, and it is well at times that we should realise its difficulties, and have it stripped bare of many helpful accessories. Yet worship in a village church impresses me. As in a college chapel, I realise then the continuity of the race. An old church tells me of generations of men who lived my life, to whom the present was everything, and the dead almost nothing, who never could seriously believe that some day the world would whirl and follow the sun without them. It tells me more than most things of what St. Paul means when he said that we were all making one perfect man. And I am humbled and thankful to know that I in my generation can do something towards the Christ 'that is to be.'
Read the Old Testament itself. Nothing will {123} atone for lack of knowledge of the Bible. Robertson Smith's and Adam Smith's books (especially the latter's) on the Old Testament Prophets ought to prove useful. . . . When I call a man by his Christian name, I usually make it a rule to pray for him. I shall do so in your case. I will try to pray every day. I wonder whether you would sometimes pray for me: I believe immensely in the power of prayer. It is the greatest favour I can ask of you, and I know I have no right to prefer the request; but it would be kind of you if you could occasionally. One needs all the help one can get in this strange life up here. Now I will end. I have written you a strange, unreserved letter. Forgive me. How I wish this dreadful war was at an end! U——'s going was a blow to me; but I am sure he did the right thing. I admire and love that man. . . .
To G. J. C.
Castleton, Swanage: 1900.
. . . You will not have misinterpreted my silence. I could not answer your letter until I had secured a time for quiet thought and for prayer. When I try to write, I feel the uselessness of words. I am doing better when I am praying for you than when I am writing to you. Yet I must write. . . . It is strange that God should have made us thus. To those whom He honours most He gives largest capacity for love, and therefore largest capacity for suffering. It is still more strange that we would not wish to be {124} without the love in spite of the agony which it brings. It must be because
All loves are shadows cast By the beautiful eternal hills Of Thine unbeginning past.
I feel this truth 'in seasons of calm weather.' But at other times I ask myself, I ask God, angrily, Why should some men have no obstacle to their love? Why should another suffer more than any one can tell—more than, it sometimes seems to me, can ever be requited? I cannot answer the question. But I often think of the great unsatisfied heart of God, and then I think of this poor unsatisfied heart made in His image, and I feel that He understands me, and that I understand Him better than I used to do, before this terrible hunger of love began.
I pray God that He will deal tenderly with you, G——, and I am sure that He will. It cuts me to the heart to think of your suffering, and I would stop it this moment if I could. So would God—for He loves you more than I do—unless it were the best thing for you. It is written of the Son of man, emathen aph on epathen. May the same words be true of you and of me! God bless you and give you Light and Peace!
Peace is something more than joy, Even the joys above; For peace, of all created things, Is likest Him we love.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrase in the above paragraph was transliterated as follows: emathen—epsilon, mu, alpha, theta, epsilon, nu; aph—alpha, phi; on—emega, nu; epathen—epsilon, pi, alpha, theta, epsilon, nu]
This letter may appear cold to you. It is not. I feel more deeply than I write. . . . Some day, if {125} you care to hear, I will tell you something about my own imperfect life. I can't write it down. Later the day will dawn. But God sends the darkness that we may learn to trust Him, I have never yet found Him to fail. We cannot trust Him too much.
To the mother of a friend, after having been present at his funeral.
Cambridge: April 22, 1900.
I feel I must write and tell you how grateful I am to you for your kindness in allowing me to be present on Thursday. Whenever I think of your son who has passed away, that text comes into my mind: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' He was pure in heart, and I cannot think of him as lifeless, but as actually seeing God. . . . I am thankful to have been allowed to be his friend. I shall never forget him; his life remains a source of strength and inspiration to me. It comforts me now to know that he is sinking deeper and deeper into the peace of God, which passeth all understanding. You were talking to me about W——; I could not say all that I wished to say. . . . I am very, very slow to suggest ordination to a man. I realise the responsibility of doing so, but there is no man whom I desire to see ordained more than W——; he has been to me more help than I can possibly say. I dare not try to tell you all that he has done for me, because you would think I was exaggerating. I cannot help feeling that, if he helps me so much, he might help others also, and that, if he were ordained, {126} he would have singular opportunities for rendering such help. But I do not press him in the matter, because I might do wrong; but I pray again and again that, if God wishes him to be ordained, He will make His purpose clear, and I am quite sure that He will not leave us in the dark.
To C. T. W.
Cambridge: July 1900.
I was delighted to read in the paper yesterday of your election to a fellowship. . . . The life will be a harder one than that of an ordinary parish clergyman; it will be easier to lose sight of ideals. But the importance of the work is in proportion to its difficulty. Blessed is the man who finds his work, and does it; and you will be blessed. . . .
You should read St. Patrick's 'Confession,' a genuine work of my distinguished countryman. It is full of humility and zeal. I give you a quotation: 'After I had come to Ireland I used daily to feed cattle, and I often prayed during the day. More and more did the love of God and the fear of Him increase, and faith became stronger and the spirit was moved; so that in one day I said as many as a hundred prayers, and in the night nearly the same. . . . And there was no sluggishness in me, as I now see there is, for at that time the spirit was fervent within me.' Pathetic—that last part. He might have been living at Cambridge! But I hope better things for you.
{127}
To C. T. W.
Thirlmere: September 1900.
My thoughts are with you now—and my prayers. 'He had seven stars—in His right hand,' was the thought which comforted me at my own ordination, when I felt, as seldom before, my own hollowness and incapacity. We can shed light—we are safe—because we are 'in His right hand.' 'The eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.' We can never go beyond His love and care. In moments of perplexity and uncertainty, although we cannot feel His presence, He is there. 'In His right hand.' 'They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.'
May God give you the power to love and the power to pray! Much prayer and much love are needed for a successful ministry. Good-bye, and God bless you and make you a true and faithful pastor! Remember St. Paul's words: he dunamis en astheneia teleitai. edista oun mallon kauchesomai en tais astheneiais, hina episkenose ep eme he dunamis tou Christou; hotan gar artheno, tote dunatos eimi.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases above were transliterated as follows: he—(rough breathing mark) eta; dunamis—delta, upsilon, nu, alpha, mu, iota, final sigma; en—epsilon, nu; astheneia—alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha; teleitai—tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, tau, alpha, iota; edista—eta, delta, iota, sigma, tau, alpha; oun—omicron, upsilon, nu; mallon—mu, alpha, lambda, lambda, omicron, nu; kauchesomai—kappa, alpha, upsilon, chi, eta, sigma, omicron, mu, alpha, iota; en—epsilon, nu; tais—tau, alpha, iota, final sigma; astheneiais—alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha, iota, final sigma; hina—(rough breathing mark) iota, nu, alpha; episkenose—epsilon, pi, iota, sigma, kappa, eta, nu, omega, sigma, eta; ep—epsilon, pi; eme—epsilon, mu, epsilon; he—(rough breathing mark) eta; dunamis—delta, upsilon, nu, alpha, mu, iota, final sigma; tou—tau, omicron, upsilon; Christou—Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon; hotan—(rough breathing mark) omicron, tau, alpha, nu; gar—gamma, alpha, rho; artheno—alpha, rho, theta, epsilon, nu, omega; tote—tau, omicron, tau, epsilon; dunatos—delta, upsilon, nu, alpha, tau, omicron, final sigma; eimi—epsilon, iota, mu, iota]
To W. D. H.
Dale Head Post Office, Thirlmere, September 20, 1900.
My thoughts and my prayers are with you at this time. I remember how at my own ordination, when I felt as never before my own utter weakness and incapacity, the thoughts in the first chapter of the Revelation, of Christian ministers as 'stars in His {128} right hand' comforted and supported me. In His right hand—with His power we can do all things. As the lesson for to-day says, he dunamis en astheneia teleitai, strength is perfected in weakness. hotan astheno tote dunatos eimi.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases above were transliterated as follows: he—(rough breathing mark) eta; dunamis—delta, upsilon, nu, alpha, mu, iota, final sigma; en—epsilon, nu; astheneia—alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha; teleitai—tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, tau, alpha, iota; hotan—(rough breathing mark) omicron, tau, alpha, nu; astheno—alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, omega; tote—tau, omicron, tau, epsilon; dunatos—delta, upsilon, nu, alpha, tau, omicron, final sigma; eimi—epsilon, iota, mu, iota]
You will feel more, as years go on, the greatness of the task which you are undertaking—the overwhelming responsibility—the dread lest through any carelessness on your part one of the least of the sheep may be lost. But you will also feel more and more that you are 'in His right hand.' And if the eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms, you need not fear what the devil or man can do unto you. I pray that God may be with you and give you the spirit of prayer and the spirit of love. Your ministry will only be effective if you pray much and love much. And if you make mistakes, yet if you love much your sins will be forgiven.
To his brother, a doctor in South Africa.
September 1900.
When I feel what the grace of God has done for my life, what it is doing, what it will do, I can despair of no one else. I am filled with wonder and amazement and thanksgivings and hopes. I am sometimes so thankful that I still live, that in a world of light and dark shadows I can show my faith in God, before the other world dawns with its full day and unclouded brightness—and most of all that I can here and now pray for those whom He has taught me to love. I cannot conceive this world without prayer. It is {129} worth while making any efforts, however desperate, to learn to pray. When the Day dawns, how wonderful it will be to look back and trace the path through which He has led us in the Twilight!
To F. J. C.
Christ's College, Cambridge: 1900.
The more He tries you by His silence, the greater to my mind is the proof that He believes in you. He knows you will come through. He has great work for you to do, and therefore you need a strong perfected faith, and He is trying to give you it.
I am so sorry at what you tell me about prayer. But do go on. When things are at their darkest light comes. After all God knows how much you can bear, and He will not, if you will only persevere, allow you to be utterly confounded. Don't be in the least discouraged at your inability to concentrate your attention. Even a man who had lived in the presence of God for years has told us that
The world that looks so dull all day Glows bright on me at prayer, And plans that ask no thought but these, Wake up and meet me there. My very flesh has restless fits; My changeful limbs conspire With all these phantoms of the mind My inner self to tire.
Do you expect to fare better, when you are exercising faculties which have been for long more or less dormant? The same man goes on to say—and I {130} think it is a comforting truth—that God sees further than we do, sees what we mean:
These surface troubles come and go, Like rufflings of the sea; The deeper depth is out of reach To all, my God, but Thee.
Even if your conscience condemns you, remember that God is greater than your conscience. He sees that you want to pray, and the battle is half won when there is even the want. I like these old words of the hymn:
Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees,
even if he can't collect his thoughts. I find it usually easier to pray for others than for myself. I believe in beginning by praying for what is easiest. I don't kneel down. I find it more possible to concentrate my attention when I am walking about or sitting down. And I tell God what I know about a man, and how I want him to live a better life. Sometimes I seem to struggle for him as though for very life. I go on and on and on—sometimes repeating the same request. I try to copy the poor widow who wearied out the dishonest judge. I am not distressed when my thoughts wander, I know that they will always wander without God's help. The distress occasioned by wandering thoughts, and the attempt to trace the stages by which they wandered, I regard as temptations of the devil. . . . I go back as calmly as possible to the matter in hand.
Excuse my 'egoism.' I put it in the first person, {131} because I believe my own experience will help you more than rules derived from the experience of others.
Suppose you spend half an hour in this way, and only really pray for three or four minutes, your efforts will be more than rewarded. You will have done more than you know for the person for whom you have prayed. And the next half-hour you will find that you can concentrate your attention for a minute or two longer. Don't think too much about yourself when you pray. You must lose your soul if you would save it.
There is probably some one thing or some one person easier than others for you to pray for. Begin with that.
I never try, as some people do, to classify and enter into details about my sins. I bring the whole contradictory, weary, and unintelligible mass of them to God, and leave them with Him. I am quite sure I shall never do better without Him. But I know that He believes in me, and will help me in spite of myself. He believes in you too, dear old fellow! May God bless you for your kindness to me! Write me just a short note to tell me that you don't despise me in spite of what must seem to you rather unintelligible and ridiculous confessions.
I can't help it. And if you can bring yourself to do it, call me too by my Christian name.
To the same.
Christ's College, Cambridge: September 28, 1900.
I feel more and more the necessity of being alone occasionally for some time—to get time enough to {132} pray. I think my supreme desire is to be a man of prayer. You must help me to accomplish the desire: 'Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo.'
So it is with prayer. As the stone gets worn away, not by the force of the drop of water but by its constant trickling, so prayer often renewed must at length attain its end. It is a wonderful privilege to be able to state all one's wishes and hopes for others in prayer—to know that there can be there no possibility of misunderstanding—to tell to God the incomprehensible depth of one's love, and to feel that He knows what it means, because He Himself is love. It is glorious to be made in His image, and to be sure that all one's highest yearnings are a reflection—however broken, partial, and unsightly—of His own marvellous life. We have indeed cause to be grateful for our 'creation.' I often look at the poor dumb creatures, and thank God that He has given me such full powers of love, which they cannot understand: for I would rather have the pains of love than any other pleasure.
To F. S. H., a chaplain in the Navy.
Cambridge: November 4, 1900.
I ought to have written before this. The fact that I did not answer at once is partly accounted for by my having a good deal of work to do, and partly by physical weakness. I have not been very well this term. It is cruel of you to suspect me of having forgotten all about you. I am not that sort. I owe too much to you in the past ever to forget you. {133} I don't think that you really suspected me of inconstancy. I am so sorry that you are sometimes lonely and very miserable. I feel at times weak, physically weak. I think that at such times one can lean back, as it were, on the Divine arms. He understands our weakness and weariness. He knows what loneliness and sadness mean. And He is not extreme to mark what we do amiss. He knows that we are but flesh. And He 'dwells not in the light alone, but in the darkness and the light.' Even when the darkness hides Him and we cannot find where He is, we can, as it were, reach out our hands to Him, and we are safe. God has much to teach us while we are teaching others. And life is not exactly the same as we thought at the beginning. He teaches us by unexpected experiences. But the comfort is that He never changes; we may be weary, but He never slumbers nor sleeps. Sometimes we feel very fit and capable. Then is the time to pray and to rise to the heights. Later, when we are incapable, although it is hard to rise, we need not fall. When the mist clears we can go on again, and it may be that we shall find that even in the mist we had gone further than we thought. The deep snow and the long dark rainy days are necessary for the perfecting of the fruit, as well as the sunshine. And we do need sunshine. I feel more and more grateful and thankful to God for His goodness. He has been so good to me, and I don't deserve it. And I think that if you look back and look forward you will feel more and more His marvellous sympathy and affection. I am glad you have been reading Robertson's Life. Though he {134} may have been almost morbid at times, he was a great man and did a great work. . . . You will find later that your work has been far more effective than you expected. Don't try to rush it. You can't help men much until you know them very well; and when you know them you find how utterly different they are from what you had expected them to be. At least I do. No two men are alike. Each man that you come really to know is utterly different from any man you have ever met or will meet.
To F. J. C.
Christ's College, Cambridge: November 5, 1900.
It is good of you to think of me and above all to pray for me. I need your prayers—and most of all when I am run down and unable to pray myself. I can see the mountain top at times: then the mist comes down, and I cannot see the way; I try to keep where I am, though I may not be able to advance; and when the mist clears I go on again. Possibly, sometimes, we may be going forward even in the mist, although we seem to be making no progress, or going backward.
God judges by a light Which baffles mortal sight.
I often wish I had more physical strength and was able to do what other men can do; but I can't. And I have no doubt that all is well—that I am made to do one particular piece of work, and that I have strength enough for that—and thank God for that.
{135}
To a brother in South Africa.
December 1900.
It is a marvellous thought that God can reveal Himself to man—even primitive man. In those stories Jehovah is very near to man. He walks in the garden at nightfall. He shuts Noah into the Ark. He comes down to see the city and the tower 'which the children of men builded.' He talks with Moses face to face as a man speaketh to his friend—and a ladder connects heaven and earth, and the angels, instead of using wings, walk up and down the ladder—and, behold, Jehovah stood above it. At any moment you might meet Jehovah Himself. Three men come to see Abraham—and Jehovah has appeared to him. A man wrestles with Jacob, and he has seen God face to face. They were right when they thought of God as very near to man, of man as capable of reflecting God's likeness. Ye too shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon—the Son of man. It is good for us as children to read these stories to realise that heaven is very near to earth. It is good for us as men to read them again to realise that heaven is even nearer earth than we thought as children. As I said before, how marvellous it is that God can reveal Himself to man and through man, that He has revealed Himself entirely, 'the perfect man,' as Maurice says, reflecting the perfect God—God and man so near one to the other that men can look upon the Son of man and see God—see Him in His perfection! Our years ought to be bound each to {136} each by natural piety. The child should surely be the father of the man.
With age Thou growest more divine, More glorious than before; I fear Thee with a deeper fear Because—I love Thee more.
I have been reading Moody's Life. It has much the same effect as Finney's used to have in days gone by—it creates a longing to work and live for God, to bring men nearer to Him, to come nearer to Him myself. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee.
What a wonderful thing that we, as a family, are so united—that our Ideal is so much the same—isn't it?
To F. S. H.
St. Moritz: January 6, 1901.
I have succeeded in unfreezing my ink, so I can write and—although it is late to do so—wish you a happy new century. It is only once in a lifetime that one can do that sort of thing! I am out here for my health. I wasn't up to much last term. However, I am as fit as a lord now, and return to Cambridge this week. I have been reading out here two very different kinds of books. One is Wellhausen's 'History of Israel,' the other Moody's Life by his son. Wellhausen's book gives you in outline the position of modern advanced criticism of the Old Testament. I have never before studied the history from the critical point of view really seriously. The study has proved extraordinarily interesting, and I {137} must say that in the main I agree thoroughly with Wellhausen's position. You will see it more or less clearly put in that 'History of the Hebrew People' in two small volumes by Kent which I recommended to you before. The history of the gradual progress of the divine revelation to the human race is a marvellous study: the way in which that people were educated to become the teachers of the world is utterly different from anything which we should have devised. I am struck more and more by the marvellous fact that God can and does reveal Himself—in His essential moral nature—to man; that we are so made that we can apprehend the revelation; nay, that we in turn can in measure reveal Him to men!
Moody's Life stirs me up to realise more the worth of the individual, the surpassing value of man's moral and spiritual nature. I long to help men to see what I see, to love Him whom I love, and the failure of my efforts is largely, I feel, due to defects in myself. Still I do not despair of doing something.
To his brother Edward in South Africa.
Brislington, Bristol; April 10, 1901.
I was much interested in . . . (your letter) and in seeing a little into your life. There is a strange family reserve among us which I sometimes deplore. Perhaps it must always be so, that we can tell most readily to strangers our deepest thoughts and feelings. Yet I feel that we ought, as far as we can in this short life, to understand one another. We have been led by different paths to understand different aspects {138} of Truth. Yet, when we have climbed to the top of the hill, I dare say we shall find that our paths were nearer to one another than we ever realised. At any rate, we shall meet on the top. I often think that your whole method of gaining truth must be unlike mine. I use my reason, but I am more than half affection, and it is that which helps me most. My strange love for some men makes me seek to live their lives, to see the world as they see it; above all, it forces me to pray. Prayer never seems to me irrational; yet I do not pray so much because my reason bids me as because my affection forces me. I sometimes feel that I should go mad if I didn't or couldn't. And then, again, I am incapable of telling them all I feel, and I have to find some one to tell it to, and I feel forced back on One who knows me through and through, and I find comfort in pouring out my soul to Him—in telling Him all, much that I dare say to no one else—in letting Him sift the good and evil—in asking Him to develop and satisfy the good, and to exterminate the evil. I cannot help trusting Him.
I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.
You will tell me perhaps that I am too much like a woman in matters of faith. Yet so I am made. I must follow the lead of my whole being—not of my mind alone. I often wonder how it is that I love with such a strange, passionate, unutterable affection, and whether many men are like me. {139} I am most pleased to hear of your doings, especially of your whist parties.
To F. S. H., chaplain on board H.M.S. Canopus.
Brislington; April 10, 1901.
I am glad that you like your 'parish.' I feel more and more that I should prefer being among sailors to being among soldiers. I am afraid that I should do little good among either. Still I like, or think that I should like, naval officers even more than army officers. If they do talk a great deal of 'shop,' that is a healthy sign. I only wish our officers in the army were—I will not say more proud of their profession (for they have, I dare say, sufficient pride)—but more anxious to learn and to think out matters connected with it. I dare say the naval officer is obliged to act more independently and to think for himself in an emergency; for the army discipline is carried to such an extreme that the man for some years has seldom any occasion to act on his own initiative—to rise to an occasion. He simply has to ask a superior what to do next. He tends to resemble the Hindu station-master who telegraphed 'Tiger on platform; please wire instructions.' If their talking shop is worrying occasionally, yet be of good comfort, it is on the whole a good sign. It is better than talking golf or polo all day, and better far than loose and unmanly conversation. The more you are interested in the matters yourself, not simply because you want to be all things to all men, if by any means you may gain one or two, but because you are a man {140} and a Christian, and therefore all things human have an interest to you, the more you will enjoy such 'shop.' We want not only to affect an interest in what is of vital concern to our neighbours, but to feel it. I begin to realise more now than I used to that I must not simply watch football matches, or run with the boats, because I want to show interest, but because I am learning—however late in the day and however imperfectly—to feel a real concern for such matters. And, strange to say, I am more interested in them than I used to be. Since the Lord took human flesh and interested Himself in all human life, He has left us an example that we may follow in His steps. We must call nothing, and no man, common or unclean. My own life and my own interests are terribly contracted. Sometimes I have been foolish enough to glory in the fact, and to think that I honour God in caring only for my brother's soul and not for his whole life. But love has taught me that this is a low and incomplete view. God numbers the very hairs of our head, and he who loves and tries to help another must enter into his life and care for all that he cares for. I hope that God will spare me a little longer to work in College, and to learn to become one with others—to see life with their eyes, to let them teach me—that so, if it please Him, I may gain some of them for His service.
The disciple cannot expect to be above the Master. The Master was not popular. He explained His deepest teaching to a few—a very few. If you have one or two to whom you can explain part of your being, thank God. You will find that {141} one man understands one side, another appreciates another side. It is a comfort that there is One who knows us through and through. What a terrible blank life would be if we had no God to whom to pour out our whole soul! There are sides of our being which no one but God seems to be able to apprehend. I am feeling now comfort at nights in simply telling Him all—feelings which I cannot explain to any one else, asking Him to interpret, to sift, to allow the better to live, to annihilate the untrue. I do not cease to expect great things from Him, to expect that He will do for my 'parish' as a whole more than I have dreamed of or wished for. But then I am content if He works slowly, and does what I did not wish or expect to happen. He works slowly in nature, and I am not surprised if human nature is still more stubborn material for Him to work upon. But what a joy it is when one character in which we are interested, for which we have prayed and wrestled in prayer, shows slight but sure signs of healthy development! I feel inclined to shout for joy at the miracle—for it is a miracle—and I thank God and take courage. He does not let us see many results, but He lets us see just enough to help us to go forward. It is a help when what is clear and true to us begins to dawn upon another. 'My belief gains infinitely,' says Novalis, 'when it is shared by any human soul.'
Let your 'parish' clearly see that 'it is one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.' Vile, foul thoughts which come to us are not in themselves a sign that we are falling. They are first of all from {142} outside, and are suggestions entirely alien in origin from ourselves; they are from the devil. They only become wrong when entertained, when welcomed in the least degree as guests and allowed to stay. Our aim is to bring every thought at once into captivity.
I have just come back from the seaside, and as I looked at the sea I thought more than once of 'the ocean of Thy love.' The waves of the sea beat against a stubborn rock and seem to make no impression. But in a few years' time the rock begins to yield. The constant wash of the waves wears it away. So with our hard, stubborn wills. The ocean of His love will reduce them slowly but surely, and likewise the stubborn wills of men around us, thank God! When you are tired and human strength gives way, remember 'the best of all is—God is with us.' I often feel worn out, and then I love, as it were, to lean back upon Him—without speaking—as a child on its mother's arms.
I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.
O brother! if my faith is vain, If hopes like these betray, Pray for me that I too may gain The sure and safer way.
And Thou, O God, by whom are seen Thy creatures as they be, Forgive me if too close I lean My human heart on Thee.[1]
{143}
I am, I fear, but a poor friend. I wish you had some one who loved you as well as I did, and who was less weak and selfish. You must not give me up in spite of my defects. I love you and am proud of you—proud to think that you are doing work among men whom I should be powerless to influence. Easter once more brings new life and hope. May the God of all life, of all peace, of all hope, be with you and all your flock! May He guide pastor and sheep! Don't despair; go on manfully; you are doing greater work than you know, and if your eyes were open that you could see, you would find that the host that was with you was more than all that were against you. Into His keeping I commit you. Good-bye. Your friend
FORBES.
[1] Whittier.
To W. O.
Brislington: April 1901.
I am glad that the lot has fallen to you in fair places. 'It has been said with true wisdom that God means man not only to work but to be happy in his work. . . . Without some sunshine we can never ripen into what we are meant to be.' So writes Dr. Hort. I am reading his Life with great joy. He drank deep of life, and I want to do so also. I want to live in the present—in the sunshine of eternity. I feel more and more inclined to thank God for life and all the good things it brings, and for the friends He has given me, and the measure of strength and health to use in the service of man.
I had no idea where that Essay had gone. I {144} suppose it is most immature and unsatisfactory; yet the central idea, however imperfectly expressed, must surely be true. He took Manhood—in its weakness and strength—up into God. He was tempted. That thought helps me immensely. 'It is one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.' We often accuse ourselves wrongly when foul thoughts spring up within us. They are temptations from without—from the devil. They only become sins when entertained as welcome guests. I have lately thought that Christ's life, like ours, was a life of faith, that it needed a real and constant effort of faith for Him to realise His relationship with the unseen Father. Here and hereafter human life is based on faith. If we get this idea into our minds, Christ's temptations become more real. They are temptations to faithlessness. I like your idea that Christ has entered into our manhood, into the phases (if there be such) 'of the life to come.'
Rest in the Lord. This thought comes home to me more than it used to do. I like to bring all the perplexities of life—the thoughts and feelings which I can explain to no one—of some of which I cannot say whether they are right or wrong, or where the right shades into wrong—and to leave them with Him to develop (if right), to sift, to correct. What a blank life would be without God! . . .
Easter brings fresh hope and life. It is glorious to begin existence in a world which has been redeemed. I am sure—since He rose and defeated death—we ought to trust to life, to delight in it. 'I am the Life.'
{145}
Breathe in the fresh air. It is one of the best gifts that the good God has bestowed upon us. We want fresh air not only in our lungs but all through, if I may say so, our being. I long to be more natural and happy—not that I wish for 'religious happiness,' but something quite different—the happiness which comes in the right exercise of power and in conscious dependence upon Him in whom we live.
In reply to a letter from H. P., a master at Clifton College, who was in doubt whether he ought to resign his mastership and go down to the College Mission in Bristol.
Christ's College, Cambridge: May 1, 1901.
I have not had time to think over the matter yet, but my first feeling is that you ought to be very slow to move. If men in your position, who feel keenly interested in the highest welfare of their pupils and long to influence them in spiritual matters, all go away to parish work, what is to become of our public school boys? Masters are only too anxious to leave for more 'directly spiritual' work, as they say. But in doing so they leave a work of exceptional difficulty and importance behind, and who is to take their place? I understand and appreciate your feelings, but I am not at all sure that you have any call to go.
How much directly 'spiritual' work have you with the boys? Could you, if you desired, get more?
I will pray over the matter. Do be slow before you decide to leave. I believe you ought to stay, {146} although it may be more difficult to maintain your own spiritual life and ideals in a school than in a parish. You may be doing more good than you know. It is easier to find men to do parish work than to do school work of the highest kind.
There is a sermon of Lightfoot's in which he urges clergymen at the University not to go away, because it is hard to maintain their spiritual ideals at Cambridge, and because they seem to have so little direct spiritual influence. May not this apply to your work also?
To one about to be ordained.
Cambridge: May 1901.
It seems so clear to us that you have a call, that I find it hard to realise that you yourself are uncertain. But the very fact that you have been 'counting the cost,' and that you have no ecstatic joy at the prospect before you, encourages me. I am glad you realise the difficulties beforehand. What you don't fully see is the strength upon which you will be able to draw. I often think of those lines of Tennyson:—
O living Will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock, Flow through our deeds and make them pure.[1]
That Will can transform our will, and the very weakness of our natural will is then a help. The strength {147} is seen and felt to come from an invisible source: 'Thy will, not my will.'
The terrible need of men to fight against the forces of evil impresses me. The call is so loud on every side. And if men like you cannot hear it, I am driven almost to despair. . . . I often think of my father's words on his deathbed: 'If I had a thousand lives I would give them all—all to the ministry.'
The thought that gave me comfort at my own ordination was a text suggested to me by my brother: 'He had in His right hand seven stars.' In His right hand—we are safe there. I felt such a worm as I had never felt before. 'But fear not, thou worm Jacob.' . . . Don't look for happiness or peace at this time, but for the presence and power (whether felt or unfelt) of that God whom we both love and try to love better. Do not persuade yourself that you do not love God. You do, more than you have any idea of. The part of your 'Ego' which you would least wish to lose is not even your love for men—but for God. If you had your choice now, and had to decide what part of your being you would retain for eternity, it would be the latter. Beloved, if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart. . . . 'He who loves makes his own the grandeur that he loves.'
He had in His right hand seven stars. He is the Judge, but He also is our refuge and strength and hope.
[1] In Memoriam, cxxi.
{148}
To D. B. K.
Cambridge: July 1901.
When we set to work to help others we discover something of our own weakness. But along with that discovery comes the realisation of an inexhaustible fund of strength outside ourselves. We are fighting on the winning side. God must be stronger than all that opposes. It is uphill work, especially at first. But just as in learning a language or learning how to swim, after toiling on with no apparent result, there comes a day when suddenly we realise that we can do it—how we know not: so it is in spiritual matters. There is effort still, sometimes gruesome effort; but it is all different from what it was. We find the meaning of the paradox, 'Whose service is perfect freedom.' Love takes the place of law, and, although it is hard at times to serve God, it is still harder to be the permanent servant of Satan.
Your enthusiasm ought to increase, the more you look life in the face and see its sin and misery. 'God,' said Moody, 'can do nothing with a man who has ceased to hope.' Our hope in the possibilities of the individual and of society ought to grow brighter and saner as time goes on. . . . Missionary work—I have often wished to do it myself, but have been 'let hitherto.' . . . It is a tremendous help to me to know that we are both serving the same Master and that I can trust you to His love.
{149}
To an Auckland 'brother' after Bishop Westcott's Death.
Cambridge: August 1901.
My thoughts are with you at this time. I am most thankful that you have been a year with that man of God, and have gained ideals and inspiration for work which will haunt you all your life long. In moments of weakness, at times 'when your light is low,' the memory of his strenuous, holy life will be a power making for self-discipline and righteousness. And it is more than a memory. For he taught us by word and deed that we are all one man, that those who have realised what it is to belong to the body here will enter more fully into its life there. 'We feebly struggle, they in glory shine'—yet we are verily and indeed one. That thought is often a comfort to me. When I feel the contradictions and perplexities and weaknesses of my own life, I love to think that I am part of a whole—that I belong to the same body and share in the same spirit as some other man who is immeasurably my superior.
When one whom we have known and venerated on earth passes to the eternal home, it seems more like home than it was before. It is peopled not only with countless saints of whom I have heard, but with one whom I have known and seen, and hope to see again. His prayers for us, his influence upon us there are more effective than they could have been here.
The great triumph of Christianity is to produce a few saints. They raise our ideal of humanity. They {150} make us restless and discontented with our own lives, as long as they are lived on a lower plane. They speak to us in language more eloquent than words: 'Come up higher.'
To F. J. C.
Belvedere Hotel, St. Moritz: Sunday, December 15, 1901.
I feel more and more thankful that I have not had to wait till the next world to know God's true nature and character and will. It is passing strange that He should love us so much, and wish to unveil Himself to us, 'that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.' But that phrase 'stewards of His mysteries' almost appals me. A steward must be faithful, and must render an account of the way in which he has used his master's goods. God grant that at the final reckoning we may not be found unprofitable servants.
How those simple words in the twenty-third Psalm satisfy us more and more as life advances, and as we realise that He is not our Shepherd only, but the chief Shepherd of the whole flock, and that He has yet other sheep whom He is looking for, and whom He will teach to hear His voice amid the babel tongues of the world. It is a comfort to me to feel that He has no private blessings for me apart from the rest of the family—that we are one in Him, and that each blessing unites us not only to the Head of the family, but to all the brothers within it.
I suppose at first it is hard to realise the unseen world for long together. But gradually that world {151} dominates our being, and interprets the world we see, and makes all life intelligible and well worth the living.
To H. J. B.
Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 16, 1901.
I feel a new man now in this fresh mountain air. If I always lived here I might be good for something. What a parable of life! If we could live in the higher world and breathe in its air, what strong, healthy men we should be! I stayed a night once with Westcott, and it seemed to me that he lived and moved and had his being in a higher region, to which I now and then came as a stranger, and he could see habitually, what I sometimes saw, the way of God in human life. I am sure we are meant to have our home in that higher world, and that we only see life sanely, steadily, and in its true proportions, when we view it from that vantage ground. I have always been thankful that I spent that night with Westcott, and thereby gained, not simply fresh inspiration, but a radically new revelation of human life and its possibilities. It gave me an insight into the dignity and the destiny of our common human nature.
You have never been long absent from my thoughts, and at last I have had time and strength to begin to pray for you as I could wish. It is the only way in which I can show my gratitude to you. I don't understand much about prayer, but I think of that strange, bold parable of the unrighteous judge and the widow, and I take my stand on that. I shall {152} not be content until your true self is formed; and I think that God must be very ready to answer the prayer, however imperfect its form may be, of one who loves another more than he can understand. I like St Paul's words: teknia mou ous odino mechris ou morphothe Christos en humin. Only I wish I were not such a worm myself. However, the thought of you compels me to live a better life. If I could only make all my thoughts of you into prayers and actions for you I should be more content.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrase in the above paragraph was transliterated as follows: teknia—tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota, alpha; mou—mu, omicron, upsilon; ous—omicron, upsilon, final sigma; odino—omega, delta, iota, nu, omega; mechris—mu, epsilon, chi, rho, iota, final sigma; ou—omicron, upsilon; morphothe—mu, omicron, rho, phi, omega, theta, eta; Christos—Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, final sigma; en—epsilon, nu; humin—(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]
Don't imitate Uriah Heep with 'Yours most humbly.' I won't stand that nonsense! and you give yourself away just a few lines above, when you assert that you are too proud to confer a favour on me, and read Greek Testament with me. What a funny chap you are! Can't you see, you idiot, what a pleasure you give me? We shall have to compromise, and I'll have to make some concession to your pride. Neither —— nor I know much about your section, but we could help you in your first part papers. Of course, he could do it miles better than I can; but, all the same, you are going to be my pupil. Promise me that you won't make any arrangement with him until you have talked the matter over with me. I'll make some compromise for the sake of your miserable pride, you wretched creature.
Write to me soon again, if it isn't a great bore. I can't recall as much as I could wish of your conversations with me. In fact, I have the unpleasant feeling sometimes that I did too much of the talking! But one or two things that you said to me live in {153} my memory, and make me wish to be more fit to talk to you.
St. Moritz is much as usual. It is a strange little world in itself. The comic and the tragic are blended weirdly together, and nature is unimaginably beautiful. I wish you could see this snow. It has an attraction for me, and I am sure it would have for you. I think you understand more about the meaning of beauty than I do. When I see a magnificent landscape, I want to share the sight with some one else. I feel quite lonely when I am interpreting it alone. I wonder why that is?
To F. J. C.
Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 21, 1901.
Christmas seems to mean more to me, the longer that I live. I gaze with bewilderment on that stupendous mystery of love—the very God entering into and raising our human nature. My whole conception of the meaning, the possibilities of our common human nature is transformed, as I see that it can become a perfect reflection and manifestation of the Divine nature. 'The Word became flesh, and lodged in us.' The manger at Bethlehem reverses all our human conceptions of dignity and greatness. 'The folly of God is wiser than men.' It is to the humble—to babes—that God can reveal Himself. In them He can find His home.
O Father, touch the East and light The light that shone when Hope was born.
It is in Christmas that Tennyson found the birth of {154} Hope. It is Christmas that, as life goes on, bids us never despair—of our own or of human nature around us.
To a friend at Cambridge.
Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 30, 1901.
I shall never forget this last Christmas Day, for your letter came in the evening. I read it again and again, and wonder at it more each time I read it. I can't tell you what I feel about it. I knew that you more or less liked and respected me, but I didn't know that you loved me. I've got what I wanted. When you merely respected me, I dreaded the day when you would find that I was different to what you thought I was. But now I feel I am safe phobos ouk estin en te agape, however imperfect you find me. I know now that I can trust you not to throw me off. And love is not extreme to mark what is amiss, hoti agape kaluptei plethos amartion. I can't thank you for your kindness, but I thank God for giving me the most precious gift in the world, a human soul 'to love and be loved by for ever.' As I look at your letter I feel a mere worm, and my one wonder is how on earth a man like you can call me your friend. I can't thank you; but I'll do my best to live up to the standard you expect of me, and to be a true friend to you. And my idea of friendship is, as you know, prayer. I can't, worse luck, do much for you, but I do pray for you, and 'whatever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.' It has been truly said that the how, the where, and the when are not told us, but only the {155} what. And I am quite certain that every prayer I offer for you is heard and answered, when I believe what I say; but the manner, the place, and the occasion of the answer—of these things I know nothing. I am sure that God loves to see us happy, and the pure joy of the knowledge that such a man as you loves me is almost more than I can bear. It throws a new light on life here, and on that fuller life to which God is leading us hereafter; like you, thank God, I cannot complain of lack of friends, but I have never had one who has written me such a letter, full of an affection for which I crave. The worst is, I can't repay your kindness. You bring me nearer to God, you make me realise in the strangest way His affection, you make me feel the worth and mystery of a human soul. I wish I could return your help somehow or other. Do show me the way. I wish you did not find it so difficult to pray for me. I am sure you are right in going back to such a man as St. Paul for subjects of prayer. The opening chapters of his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians give the kinds of requests which it is worth making on behalf of any one. There is surely no harm in finding that, as you pray for another, your own faith is growing. There is nothing selfish in that. It is rather the result of the law didote kai dothesetai humin.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: phobos—phi, omicron, beta, omicron, final sigma; ouk—omicron, upsilon, kappa; estin—epsilon, sigma, tau, iota, nu; en—epsilon, nu; te—tau, eta; agape—alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; hoti—(rough breathing mark) omicron, tau, iota; agape—alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; kaluptei—kappa, alpha, lambda, upsilon, pi, tau, epsilon, iota; plethos—pi, lambda, eta, theta, omicron, final sigma; amartion—alpha, mu, alpha, rho, tau, iota, omega, nu; didote—delta, iota, delta, omicron, tau, epsilon; kai—kappa, alpha, iota; dothesetai—delta, omicron, theta, eta, sigma, eta, tai, alpha, iota; humin—(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]
Your faith can only grow with exercise, and you exercise it by praying for others. You would only be selfish if you prayed for some one else in order that your own soul might be benefited.
But don't think too much of selfishness. Bring {156} all your half selfish desires to Him who knows us through and through; and in His presence, almost unconsciously, your motives will gradually be purified. You will learn to walk in the light as He Himself is in the light. As I look back on this letter, a large part of it seems selfish. I expect much is; but, even in the selfish parts, there is something more besides. I can only just say what I feel, and ask God gradually to eliminate what is wrong. In His light I shall see light.
Life is large, and I am fearful lest, in attempting a rough and ready asceticism, I should exclude as wrong some elements which are in reality God-given. I feel that in the case of our affections and our longing for beauty. They are implanted in us, and tended and watered by One who is perfect Love and perfect Beauty. They easily lead us into sin, but that fact does not imply that they are wrong in themselves. We have to bring them to their source that He may interpret them, 'Too late have I sought thee,' said Augustine, 'thou Beauty, so ancient and so new, too late have I sought thee.' I cannot understand the mystery of your life, dearest, but I feel that all that craving for beauty is in some kind of way a craving for God. Only God demands the first place in your life before He will give you any satisfying interpretation of that aspect of His life. You must love Him for what He is—not simply because He is Beauty.
I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty, I woke and found that life is Duty.
{157}
They are not really contradictory conceptions. Nay, Duty has a spiritual beauty of her own. But sometimes they seem for a moment divergent, and then you must at all costs choose the latter, and you will find that
The topmost crags of Duty scaled, Are close upon that shining tableland To which God Himself is shield and sun.
And, if I am not mistaken, that land will be utterly full of an absolutely satisfying beauty.
But I feel that I scarcely yet understand anything about the meaning of Beauty. All I can do is to relate it immediately to God. If I see beautiful scenery, I am usually thinking of God and thanking Him. If I see human beauty, I feel that I am on holy ground, and I always try to pray for a face that attracts me. I feel that I have a duty in return for the revelation that has been given. But, as you see, I can explain but little. These are merely rules of practical life which we very imperfectly carry out. I cannot explain the relation of physical and spiritual beauty in human beings. I feel, of course, that there ought to be, there very often is, some such relation. But sometimes there is something utterly wrong, and apparently no such connective. The connection, I take it, is more perfect in nature; but in man, why, something has occurred, something anomalous, which mars the whole. Sin has come in somewhere, I suppose.
I can't express on paper what I feel, or give you any real conception of what you are to me. You {158} would be startled if you knew. God bless you, and work out in you, not my miserable ideal of what I think you ought to be, but His own ideal, which exceeds all our thoughts and imagination, of what you are to be.
To G. J. C.
Christ's College: 1901.
. . . I was never so pleased to hear of any engagement as of yours. I thank God with all my heart. I cannot put my joy into words, but somehow or other it seems to bring me nearer to the source of all joy. I feel more than ever that He cares for us and is educating us, and I feel that He has been so good to you, because He loves you. The older I grow the more I am impressed by His infinite sympathy and concern for us. And when He gives us not only love but a return of love, it seems to me that He is giving us the very best thing that He has—a part, as it were, of Himself. 'The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done His marvellous works, that they ought to be had in remembrance.'
I cannot tell you how glad I am. But I thank God in my prayers for you; and I am sure that if He has been so good to you in the past, He will not forget you in the future.
To the same when he had just accepted a mastership at Eton.
Brislington, Bristol: 1901.
. . . . How good of you to write and tell me of your future work! . . . The responsibility of such a {159} life is to my mind almost overwhelming. 'Who is sufficient for these things? Our sufficiency is of God.'
I am thankful that the offer came as it did—unsought by you. You will feel happier in accepting it. 'Infinite sympathy is needed for the infinite pathos of human life'—more especially of a boy's life. The first, second, third, requisite for a master is, in my judgment, sympathy. As I look back on my own school days, I cannot help feeling that most of my masters were either lacking in it or else strangely incapable of manifesting it in a form which I could understand. Sympathy with the dull, unpromising boy is a divine gift, and I trust that Holy Orders will confer upon you this grace also. I thank God that you are taking orders, and finding your work in teaching. Forgive this lecture from one who has no right to speak, and who is himself strangely deficient in sympathy.
To D. B. K.
Eastbourne: September 1901.
I am glad that you have been home. I feel that home is a revelation—a means whereby the Eternal Father shows us Himself and His purposes, a strengthening and refreshing of our tired souls. . . . I have prayed earnestly for you that your faith and love may not fail. I feel intensely the same difficulty as you, and I am only slowly learning to overcome it. I do not think we can learn to love people who are altogether different from us in many respects, all at once. I love some men with a strange, unsatisfied affection. All my thoughts about them I am {160} gradually learning to resolve into prayers for them, and I want to live longer that I may pray for them more.
Well, it seems to me that God gives us this affection that we may learn to do to others as we would do to these. I cannot pretend to care for many with whom I come into contact as much as I do for the few. But I can pray for them, and the feeling will more or less come in time. Just try to pray for some one person committed to your charge—say for half an hour or an hour—and you will begin really to love him. As you lay his life before God, as you think of his needs and hopes, and failings and possibilities, as you pray earnestly for him as you would for some one whom you feel intense affection for; at the end of the time you will feel more interested in him, you will think of him not as one of a class but as a separate, mysterious person. You will not, it may be, have time to pray for many in this way, but you will learn imperceptibly to extend your sympathy—to feel real love for many more. I advise you to keep a record of these prayers. It is quite worth your while to take practically a day off sometimes, and to force yourself to pray. It will be the best day's work you have ever done in your life. Remember that!
Don't be troubled by comparing yourself with other clergymen. I think you are like me—not ecclesiastically minded. I don't have the sort of feelings which a large number of persons have about their work and their preaching. I can't put the difference into words, yet I feel it. But I must serve God in my own way, and I am sure that He will use me to do the work for which I am best fitted. And the {161} same is true of you. Try to refer all your actions to His standard; and test your work in His presence; and don't ask what So-and-so thinks of it.
I very much wish you had some gentlemen to associate with besides parsons. You must keep up as much as possible with your college friends; and use every opportunity which reasonably presents itself of seeing some 'society.' God knows what is best for you at present.
God nothing does or suffers to be done But thou wouldest do thyself, couldest thou but see The end of all events as well as He.
I am sure that He will not forget you. He knows what is best for your development. It may be that He takes you away from friends that you may learn to pray for them more and to see Him more clearly.
I think you will influence many men whom a more ordinary parson would not touch. . . . I am quite certain that if you have infinite hope—hope against hope—you will be a tremendous power in the place where God has put you.
Get as much exercise as you can, and always get a clear day off in the week, and don't give up any of your old interests. Don't always read 'religious' literature. . . . When the long day is done and we stand before the judgment seat, I believe that many will rise up and call you blessed. Only pray for individuals—for a long time together. To influence, you must love; to love, you must pray.
{162}
To one about to be ordained.
Eastbourne: September 1901.
I shall indeed remember you on Sunday next. The words of the lesson come home to me to-day—kai eireken moi Arkei soi he chariu mou; he gar dunamis en astheneia teleitai.
We are poor creatures, but there is Grace—and we can come into contact with it—and that is all we need. We may have failed in the past, but Christ offers a new childlike life and endless hope.
I am glad to think that you will be returning to your difficult post at Cambridge. I am sure that you will return to it with fresh humility and courage—en pleromati eulogias Christou.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraphs were transliterated as follows: kai—kappa, alpha, iota; eireken—epsilon, iota, rho, eta, kappa, epsilon, nu; moi—mu, omicron, iota; Arkei—Alpha, rho, kappa, epsilon, iota; soi—sigma, omicron, iota; he—(rough breating mark) eta; chariu—chi, alpha, rho, iota, final sigma; mou—mu, omicron, upsilon; he—(rough breathing mark) eta; gar—gamma, alpha, rho; dunamis—delta, upsilon; nu, alpha, mu, iota, final sigma; en—epsilon, nu; astheneia—alpha, sigma, theta, epsilon, nu, epsilon, iota, alpha; teleitai—tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, tau, alpha, iota; en—en—epsilon, nu; pleromati—pi, lambda, eta, rho, omega, mu, alpha, tau, iota; eulogias—epsilon, upsilon, lambda, omicron, gamma, iota alpha, final sigma; Christou—Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]
To W. D. H.
St. Moritz: January 4, 1902.
I hope that you are now less overworked than you were in October. You must at all costs make quiet time. Give up work, if need be. Your influence finally depends upon your own first-hand knowledge of the unseen world, and on your experience of prayer. Love and sympathy and tact and insight are born of prayer. I am glad you have a Junior Clergy S. P. G. Association. Try to take an intelligent interest in it, and mind you read a paper before long.
To his brother Edward in South Africa.
Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: January 7, 1902.
I am glad to think that we are now in many respects agreed about the general question of the {163} war. I suppose in any great historical upheaval there are at the time a number of people who are attempting to make capital for themselves out of the misfortunes of others; there are many who are working for their own hand; and yet, when we look back on the crisis and judge it as a whole in the calm light of history, we see that a large and rational purpose has been worked out. At the time of the English Reformation—as some one was saying to me lately, pointing the parallel which I am working out—there must have been a number of honest and pure souls who held aloof from the whole of what appeared to be political jobbery and fortune-making at the expense of religious sentiment. Yet now most of us feel that the movement could not have had the effects that it had, unless down below all there was a strong upheaval of the national conscience. You will no doubt see many defects in this historical parallel; but the thought is at any rate suggestive, and full of what we require in these latter days—hope. Of course I feel that injustice, dishonesty, cruelty, selfishness are in no way palliated because they take cover and occasion in a real movement of national feeling.
I feel for you much in your work for examinations. It must come very hard with ill health and in a hot climate, with the freshness of youth to some extent passed. But
O well for him whose will is strong, He suffers, but he shall not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong
{164} It needs more courage than you were required to show on the field of battle. But the reward is sure. I feel strongly that this life is but the prelude to a larger life, when each faculty will have its full exercise.
Ah yet, when all is thought and said, The heart still overrules the head; Still what we hope we must believe, And what is given us receive; Must still believe, for still we hope, That in a world of larger scope, What here is faithfully begun Will be completed, not undone.
These words come from dough—the soul of honesty.
To H. J. B.
Derwent Hill, Ebchester, Durham: April 14, 1902.
It seems to me a truism to say that we ought to look at life in the light of eternity. Only then does the true significance of the meanest action in life appear. Life is redeemed from triviality and vulgarity. So far from worldly possessions losing their value, and ordinary occupations appearing insignificant, their importance is realised as never before. If man does not live for ever, his character and actions seem of comparative unimportance. If he does live for ever, it is rational for him to look at each action in the light of that larger life which he inherits. If something like class distinctions are eternal, it is an inducement so to use your distinctive privileges here in a worthy manner, that hereafter you may use them for nobler ends.
{165}
I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I want to say. My relations to you surely become not less, but more important, when I realise that I am only beginning to know and love you here. The eternal element in them—the knowledge that there is throughout an implicit reference to a Third and Unseen Person in all that I say to you or think of you—fills me with a sense of awe, and makes the relations more real because more spiritual.
To the mother of his godchild, Margaret Forbes.
July 6, 1902.
I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to see my godchild. . . . I feel she has a strength of purpose and a desire to know the truth which will fit her for high service in God's kingdom on earth. I pray for her, and I shall do so in the future with fuller understanding and with great hope. What God hath begun He will assuredly bring to perfection. I hope that some day she will learn to pray for Uncle Forbes. I should value her prayers. It is good to feel that in the midst of your weary time of weakness God has given you such a child as a pledge of His affection for you, as an assurance that He believes in you. To give you a little child to train for Himself is a proof that He trusts you very much. I do not know that He could have given a greater proof of His confidence in you. And it is God's implicit trust in us that draws out our trust in turn. We trust and love Him, because He first trusted and loved us. I wonder more and more at the way in which He trusts us. To allow us to suffer without {166} telling us the reason, when He knows that we shall be inclined to think harshly of Him—that is, perhaps, the greatest proof that He believes in us. He can try our faith and perfect it by long-continued trial, because He knows that we shall respond, that we shall prove 'worthy to suffer.'
To H. J. B.
Christ's College, Cambridge: August 26, 1902.
The worst of seeing you for some time is that I feel it all the more impossible to live without you. I realise now as never before that you are out and away before me, and better than I am; and yet I feel that you are part and parcel of my life. You mustn't be too hard on me if I can't come up to your ideal.
Intellectually the Hebrew and Greek ideals may be irreconcilable. Yet 'life is larger than logic;' and practically we may become heirs of both ideals. The man who loses the world, who gives up all without any desire for gain, is often given the whole back again transfigured, glorified by sacrifice. To get you must forget. If you love God absolutely with all your being, you inherit the life that is as well as that which is to come. If all is not given you, yet enough is given for the development of character. But there must, it seems to me, be an absolute sacrifice—a surrender of your whole being—whatever the result may be. There must be no calculation.
High Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less and more.
{167}
You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind: you must trust Him to do the best by you. You say the Hebrew ideal does not appeal to you. But I know better; for you half like me, and I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews! There must be a dash of recklessness about the man who gains the other world. 'All or nothing' is the requirement of the kingdom of Heaven. To gain yourself you must throw yourself away—'lose your soul.' You must have faith. 'He who loves makes his own the grandeur that he loves' is a sentence of Emerson which consoles me when I think of my love for you.
To a friend at Cambridge.
40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 8, 1902.
I have been thinking of you. I keep myself from becoming morbid by making most of my thoughts into prayers for you. The glory—wonder—strangeness of being loved by a man from another and a better world fills me with gratitude to God. Sometimes it seems a dream, and I half dread that I shall wake up and find that you have ceased to care for a worthless creature. But phobos ouk estin en te agape, all he teleia agape exo ballei ton phobon. I need not fear. I know that you will love me, whatever happens.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: phobos—phi, omicron, beta, omicron, final sigma; ouk—omicron, upsilon, kappa; estin—epsilon, sigma, tau, iota, nu; en—epsilon, nu; te—tau, eta; agape—alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; all—alpha, lambda, lambda; he—(rough breathing mark) eta; teleia—tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, alpha; agape—alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; exo—epsilon, xi, omega; ballei—beta, alpha, lambda, lambda, epsilon, iota; ton—tau, omicron, nu; phobon—phi, omicron, beta, omicron, nu]
I want you to be one of the best men that ever lived—to see God and to reveal Him to men. This is the burden of my prayers. My whole being goes out in passionate entreaty to God that He will give me what I ask. I am sure He will, for the request {168} is after His own heart. I do not pray that you may 'succeed in life' or 'get on' in the world. I seldom even pray that you may love me better, or that I may see you oftener in this or any other world—much as I crave for this. But I ask, I implore, that Christ may be formed in you, that you may be made not in a likeness suggested by my imagination, but in the image of God—that you may realise, not mine, but His ideal, however much that ideal may bewilder me, however little I may fail to recognise it when it is created. I hate the thought that out of love for me you should accept my presentation—my feeble idea—of the Christ. I want God to reveal His Son in you independently of me—to give you a first-hand knowledge of Him whom I am only beginning to see. Sometimes more selfish thoughts will intrude, but this represents the main current of my prayers; and if the ideal is to be won from heaven by importunity, by ceaseless begging, I think I shall get it for you. But it grieves me to think that I can do nothing else for you. To receive so many favours from you, and to be incapable of doing more in return—this is what saddens me. I feel an ungrateful brute. You have brought new joy, hope, power into my life, and I want to show my gratitude. You would be doing me a real kindness if you would tell me how I could show it.
Don't think by what I have said that I simply care—as an 'Evangelical' would say—for your 'soul.' Every part of your being—everything you do or say—all that you are—has a strange fascination for me. Only I feel that the whole of it is a revelation of {169} God; and I want that revelation to be clearer, truer, simpler. I am sure God does not only care for our souls. It is every part of our complicated being—all sides of our manifold life—that attracts Him. He loves our home life, our affection for the dear old Mother Earth which He made, our interest in the men and women whom He formed in His own image. He longs that all those interests should be developed—that we should live genuine, sane human lives. But true development here or elsewhere—the law of existence in heaven or on earth—is life through death. 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.' You must give up all. As I think of you, those words keep ringing in my ears: 'If any one cometh to Me, and hateth not his own father and mother, yea, and his own self also, he cannot be My disciple.'
I cannot tell you what they mean. You must find them out for yourself.
If I were a true disciple of Christ, you could see what they mean by looking at me. But I am not. You must learn their meaning for yourself. Your mother's life will speak louder than words of mine. Only I know they are true. Christ will recreate the world, recreate the home, human beings, dear Mother Earth; but He cannot do so until you have been willing to give up all—until He has caused you to be 'born again.' When the ruler asked how these things could be, Christ could only repeat His words. The man must work it out for himself.
But I am sure that he that willeth to do the will {170} shall know whether the teaching be true. There are no doubt some mere intellectual obscurities in the ideal which I might make simpler if I were not such a duffer. But finally a paradox would be left—a paradox which can only be solved by living the ideal out, and finding it work. It is the pathos of our love, of God's love for us, that each man, however much he is loved, must work out the ideal for himself. No man can save his brother's soul.
I do not like to weaken the paradoxes of the Gospel. I think there is more in Christ's words concerning 'loving one's life' or 'self' than you suggest. You say it means 'self-denial.' Yes, that is true, but what a tremendous meaning 'deny one's self' has! To disown your identity, that is not much easier when you come to think of it than to lose your life. I know you will find out what it all means, and that human love, beauty, home, social service, will be more real than ever before, because you will see the eternal reality underneath. You will be a 'new creation.'
Now I must stop without satisfactorily answering your question, without entering into any casuistical questions concerning conformity such as you suggest. I should like you to think out that problem in casuistry more for yourself, before I attempt to answer it. Forgive me for talking so much about myself. When all is said and done, words fail me. I can only thank God that you exist, and that you let me love you.
{171}
To H. P., a Clifton College master who had given up school work in order to devote himself to the School Mission in Bristol.
40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 30, 1902.
. . . I am glad that you feel you have done right in giving up your school work. I am sorry that you left Clifton, but you thought you ought to go, and that is an end of the matter. I can only hope that you are in some measure a connecting-link between the school and its mission. . . . Don't forget me in my very different work—and yet work for the same Master—at college. I have need of your prayers. It is so easy to blunder, and to drive a man further from the kingdom by lack of sympathy and love. I feel more than I used to my weakness, and my absolute need of prayer.
To his brother Edward in South Africa.
40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: October 1, 1902.
The October term has an interest of its own, bringing, as it does, a batch of freshmen. I try more and more not simply to impose my ideals upon them, but to find out their ideals and to quicken them with all my power. But assuredly 'infinite sympathy is needed for the infinite pathos of human life;' and my sympathies are as yet imperfectly developed.
Still, as years go by, I think I can sympathise more with those who have been trained up in other schools of thought and experience. I was reading in a book lately that we are largely responsible for our {172} own experiences, that we have a duty to get them of the right kind. The book was by an American lady on social questions. I think there is truth in her words.
To D. B. K., head of a Public School Mission.
Eastbourne: October 1902.
I delight to know men better, because I find so much more in them than I had expected. They differ from me, and I try to get out of the habit of making them in my own image, and try to find the image in which God is making them. I have been praying for you. I want a spirit of sanity and sacrifice to possess you, that you may be able to see the good works which God has prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. . . .
I am struck by the sacrifice which Christ demands. Unless the man hates father, mother, family, friends, yea, and himself also, he 'cannot be' His disciple, Christ gives them all back again—only 'with persecutions.' We find more in the world, when we are 'crucified to it,' than ever before; but there is a something added. We have a deeper joy in home ties, in human love, in social life, in the changing seasons, in the dear old earth. Only the joy has a note of sorrow, a pathos, which Christ calls 'persecutions.' We see more in life, and yet we are in a measure out of sympathy with our surroundings. We have heard and we can never forget the sorrows of those who are 'one man' with us. There is more in that word 'persecutions' than this, as no doubt {173} you have found. But this, I think, is part of its signification, isn't it? . . .
I believe in your 'mission' even more than you do. It is men like you, who through great tribulations strive to enter the Kingdom, that God uses. The fact that you are two men, and that the true man—the Christ—is painfully yet surely being 'formed' in you, means that you will be able to appeal to others who are painfully conscious of their double consciousness and are often the slaves of the lower, inhuman self. Your wealth of affection will make you feel as St. Paul did—teknia mou, ous palin mechris ou morphothe Christos en humin.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: teknia—tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota, alpha; mou—mu, omicron, upsilon; ous—omicron, upsilon, final sigma; palin—pi, alpha, lambda, iota, nu; mechris—mu, epsilon, ch, rho, iota, final sigma; ou—omicron, upsilon; morphothe—mu, omicron, rho, phi, omega, theta, eta; Christos—Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, final sigma; en—epsilon, nu; humin—(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]
These words sum up for me, better than any others, my deepest wish for my friends. I fall back with desperate energy upon prayer, as the one power by which my wish can be realised.
You seem to look ahead almost more than is necessary. I delight in the feeling that I am in eternity, that I can serve God now fully and effectively, that the next piece of the road will come in sight when I am ready to walk on it 'I do not ask to see the distant scene.' I hate the unsettled feeling that I have not yet begun my main work.
Don't measure work by human standards of greatness. Your present occupation might well be the envy of angels—if they could envy.
But now I am lecturing. So it is time to shut up. . . .
I fear that the origin of evil is more of a mystery to me now than when I wrote that essay! But I still think that we are fighting a real being, one whom {174} we can best describe as personal. His will, it seems to me, must be given to him by God. He has identified it with a hitherto unrealised potentiality for disobedience. In plain language, his will is free, and therefore capable of resisting God. I should like to have a talk with you some day about it. But, as you see, the problem is beyond me. . . .
It is a strength to me to feel that you are fighting the devil in yourself and others up in ——, and that I am 'one man' with you.
To D. B. K.
St. Moritz: January 1903.
It is getting on for your birthday, isn't it? Congratulations. I wish I knew the exact day. I think more and more that a birthday is a subject not—as poor Job thought—for anathemas, but for congratulations. To be a reasonable human being—with capacity for seeing something of God's purposes for the race—with power to forward them—with opportunities for love and sacrifice and prayer—oh! I am so glad that I was not a mere animal. And to be born at the end of the nineteenth century—I prefer that period even to Apostolic times. We can know more of God's purposes, enter more deeply into His mind and even His heart, than primitive Christians.
I have been reading to-day Temple's essay on 'The Education of the World' in 'Essays and Reviews.' Get hold of an old copy of that book, and read it. It is strong and manly, and rings true. I {175} love that old man with his tenderness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, and will of steel. I thank God for him. There is something about utter goodness which makes me worship, and fills me with the challenge, 'Go and do thou likewise.' Goodness is as infectious as any disease.
I have been thinking lately of the self-sacrifice of God's life. I suppose that is the reason why He can enter into our lives—see them from the inside.
Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest, Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame.
It must have been the wealth of His self-sacrifice which made Him give us selves—wills—of our own. Then He makes them His own by more self-sacrifice. We are made in His image—made to go out of self, and find our self by losing it. Other men at first seem to limit our freedom, but later we find that the apparent limitations are only just scope for realising our true self. Each time we go out of self, and enter into another 'ego,' we return the richer for our sacrifice. We take up other lives into our own, and are richer than a millionaire.
I think that when the other 'ego' is most unlike our own—when at first sight the man is repulsive, and (worse still) uninteresting to us—when the sacrifice is great, if we would see life through his eyes, share his ambitions, fears, longings, and mental outlook, then is the time when we are peculiarly rewarded for our pains. Our consciousness is larger, more human, more divine than before.
'By feeblest agents doth our God fulfil His {176} righteous will' is the thought suggested by some of our brother-clergy. God does not choose the agents we should choose. Or perhaps the latter do not respond to His choice. Yet I feel that I am one of them, and that it is my faults writ large which I detest in them. I feel that, with all the riches of the revelation which I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But it is hard, God knows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence. But the forces of good must be united ('Keep, ah! keep them combined. Else . . .'), and if by any effort we can enter into their lives, and transcend the barriers between us, we are not only enriching our own life, but we are doing our best to show a combined front against the almost overwhelming forces of evil. |
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